If you missed last week’s special offering of the Champagne Brut Réserve from Raphaël Bérèche, this unique, creamy (sparkling) wine of Burgundy could be a worthy alternative; a different (not lesser) sparkling wine – the way that Pouilly-Fuissé is different from Chablis. On the other hand, if you didn’t miss the Champagne, you can do what I did: I bought a few of each. This is the one we’ll be drinking at Dave and Susan’s house on Christmas Day.

André Bonhomme’s grandson Aurélien gave me the technical data: organically grown, 60 year-old Chardonnay vines, hand-harvested and hand-riddled. Add to that a unique dosage of late-harvested 1996 Macon-Viré (!). But none of that prepared me for what I tasted last Sunday when I opened the first bottle: ripe Baldwin apples, with honeycomb, baking spices and wet stones, and a fine, elegant, persistent mousse; one of the most memorable sparkling wines I have tasted this year (two of the others are from Champagne).

André Bonhomme made the legendary “house white wine” of Le Bec-Fin, which I poured by the glass for ten years when I was the sommelier. Guests sometimes thanked me for the excellent Meursault they thought they were drinking. Today the same Viré-Clessé of André Bonhomme is a Moore Brothers classic. But André never offered us a sparkling wine (he never made it after 1992) until this: a unique disgorgement of 500 cases, made to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his first harvest in 1956.

André Bonhomme:
When André Bonhomme took over the family vineyards in 1956, he immediately quit selling the grapes in bulk to the local cooperative, exasperating his father, and alienating his neighbors. Setting out to bottle his own wine meant investing in winery equipment, buying bottles and corks, and finding his own customers.

But being the first estate-bottler in the Maconnais had a long-term advantage: he was able to get a good, first-hand look at individual wines from unique vineyard sites, and by experiment to learn which vineyards produced the best grapes. By selling his wine in bottle rather than in bulk he was able to earn enough to quietly assemble a patchwork of the best vineyards in the region.

This wine:
First, use a good all-purpose wine glass. Leave the tall skinny flutes for the over-chilled mass-market Champagne you don’t really want to taste. These aromatics deserve better: ripe apples and Bosc pears, with beeswax and spices. Rich and vibrant on the palate with a tight core of honeyed apple and limestone minerality, and a firm long finish. Give it time in the glass, and be prepared to be stunned by how good this is. Most fifty-dollar Champagnes taste cheap and simple beside it. Drink now – 2015.

As always at Moore Brothers, this wine was shipped and delivered to us in refrigerated containers. I never tasted it at the winey in Viré, but it’s hard to imagine it tasting any more compelling and fresh than it was last night at home, with a roasted fillet of red snapper.

I invite you take advantage of this special offer, and thank you again for your support of small-farm winegrowers, and their stewardship of our viticultural heritage.
Greg Moore